Manufacturing has been recognized as the main engine for growth of the economy. The share of manufacturing sector in Indian National GDP over the years has stagnated to 14-15% only. The National Manufacturing Policy of Government of India envisages share of manufacturing to reach target of 25% of the National GDP by 2022. To achieve a sustained rate of growth, the manufacturing sector needs to build and maintain competitiveness needed to face the challenges posed by globalization.
Under the LMCS scheme a project on, “Implementation of Lean Manufacturing in Auto MSMEs” sponsored by DC-MSME has been initiated. A mini cluster name BOSS CLUSTER of nine vendor units of Ashok Leyland, Pantnagar has been formed. Under this Scheme, IIM Kashipur act as a consultant for the MSMEs. The broad aspect of the consultancy is to assist MSMEs in reducing their Manufacturing Costs, through Proper Personnel Management, Better Space Utilization, Scientific Inventory Management, Improved Process Flows, and Reduced Engineering Time and so on with the application of Lean Manufacturing techniques. In order to build the capability to implement LMCS over the period in MSMEs various programmes has been designed by IIM Kashipur. Many of the MSMEs has been benefitted with trainings on various topics such as VSM, 7 QC Tools etc.

2. Research project funded by the Ministry of Panchayat Raj, Govt. of India for an Action Research for applicability of Kanban system on project execution of flagship Government Programme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNRGS).

The hallmark of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is its persistence on community participation, particularly participation of the workers, in the planning, designing, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of works. The MGNREGS is one of the most important employment providing schemes in India backed by legislation. The legislation guarantees 100 days employment to any rural household that desires to do any manual work stipulated in the Act, during a financial year. The scheme has three important dimensions - one dimension is the creation of assets in rural areas; second dimension is the social protection of the vulnerable sections of the society; and the third dimension is the guaranteed provision for employment, the mother of all social securities. For practical purposes, each work under MGNREGS would have to be done by a team of laborers and the total output measured collectively at the end of every sixth day of work as wages are ideally to be paid on a weekly basis. National Rural Employment Guarantee Act issued by the Government of India stipulate that the respective State Governments should undertake comprehensive time and motion studies for developing District Schedule of Rates after observing work out-turn. However, the studies pertaining to the Time and Motion and quantity and quality of asset creation is least studied area in literature. That apart the validation of the work standard and SoR with respect to quality and quantity of assets and key factors contributing to the variation across various geographies across the India is a less reported element in the literature. Since the scheme get more matured, the work can be more aligned to the basic asset creation and there exists an opportunity to align each moment of work for effective asset creation which in turn can be helpful for a development of the nation.
The importance of the research proposal is based on the premises that, there are lots of efficiency and effective issues in MNREG Programme especially in creating quality of assets. In order to do that a complete process re-engineer need to be done in planning, executing and monitoring process. An attempt has been made to apply the Lean Kanban principles to help seamless execution of the process and make it more flexible.
This research study has following objectives:
• To develop a model for assessment of work norms for various assets and impacted factors associated with planning and execution of MGNREGS
• To pilot test the Kanban system in MGNREGS
• To Assessment of effectiveness of Kanban system in MNREGS